Blood Father is short but fearsome; much like its leading man. At the start of the film a bearded, ex-con Gibson very grumpily tells his support group he has been clean and sober for two years. And that’s the message audiences are supposed to take from this lean thriller: Mel’s still mean, moody and mad, but he’s also repentant.

This latest in a series of Gibson comeback efforts is much like all the others: broadly enjoyable without quite doing enough to seal the deal. In this one he is trying to protect his daughter (Moriarty, who has one of those intechangeable engenue faces that you can’t quite place, even after you've looked up what you've seen her in) from a group of South American drug dealers. He applies himself to the task with a tenacity that borders on the ferocious, a bit like the way in which he applies himself to the retrieval of his lost fame.

Anyone else would've given up by now, but Gibson is adamant that, aged 60, he still warrants movie stardom and he makes a strong case here. His great skill is being able to play a role and put across his star persona at the same time, without one dragging down the other. In his performance as Link, you can see the scars of a bad man scratching around wondering what to do with himself now that his demons aren't driving him. But all the time, he is still Mel Gibson - action hero.

Gibson carries himself like someone in a gritty 70s style thriller, who could sit in a grim and greasy Elmore Leonard bar, even though he has made his career in 80's/ 90's gleaming, magic hour fantasies of ultra violence. The film has a similar trajectory, an honest drama that can't stick to the straight and narrow and every so often has to open up with a hail of bullets or show of force that is more than is strickly speaking necessary.